


Man, Rearranged

by calliglad



Category: Merlin (TV) RPF
Genre: Big Bang Challenge, M/M, Psychological Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-08
Updated: 2011-04-08
Packaged: 2017-10-17 18:39:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calliglad/pseuds/calliglad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After 'Merlin', Bradley's career skyrockets. Amidst his growing fame and budding relationship with Colin, he starts having strange dreams and begins to wonder what is real and what isn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Man, Rearranged

It's the wrap party and Bradley is drunk.

"Chairs," he says, firmly.

"What?" says Colin.

"Chairs," Bradley repeats, less certainly. "I'm not sure I like them."

"What's not to like?" Colin asks, but Bradley's had what's getting on to be too much to drink and he's not sure the subject is quite so interesting as it was nine seconds ago.

"Chairs," he says again, just to reaffirm the point. "I mean, who invented the first chair?"

"God? The Prime Minister?"

"And what the hell were they thinking when they did it? 'Cause, look at that thing!"

Bradley waves his hand and Colin looks over immediately at what actually might be a coffee table.

"Yeah," says Colin, squinting a little. "Crazy."

They carry on in this vein until Anthony sidles over in search of decent conversation, finds none, and says,

"It's a coffee table, boys."

"Oh," says Colin, and bursts out laughing.

Anthony excuses himself as Bradley starts up as well, but Bradley doesn't notice. He's too busy watching Colin laugh and cataloguing the reasons why it's too difficult not to love him.

"Nobody else would put up with you," Colin always says.

Bradley thinks that's just the beginning of it.

Katie elbows her way through a gaggle of make-up artists and attaches herself to his arm. "Bradley! How's things?"

"Pretty good," he says. "You?"

"I'm good, I'm good," she replies, then, "But I'm not good! Bradley, _Merlin_ is over--it's the end of an _era_."

"That it is."

"What are we going to do? I haven't played anyone other than Morgana for years."

"I dunno," says Bradley. "I've got a meeting with my agent tomorrow."

"Oh, well, best get you prepared, then," Katie says, then pours half of her cocktail into his glass. When he looks doubtfully at the results, she snorts and says, "Man up, Bradders."

He downs it, whereupon his recollection of the evening gets a bit hazy, and turns up at his agent's office the next afternoon, hungover and wishing the train to London hadn't swayed so much.

"Nice of you to join us, Bradley," says Scarlett.

"'Us' being the world of the living?" he replies, slumping into a chair. The world spins a bit, so he focuses on a hideous piece of abstract artwork until things calm down.

"I have some good news or some bad news," she says.

"Good news _or_ bad news?"

"Depending on how you take it."

"Well, put the good spin on it and we'll see how we go." Bradley instantly regrets saying 'spin', because his chair legs suddenly seem to be of continuously varying lengths.

Scarlett doesn't seem to notice. "Good news, Bradley!" she says. "I've got you a job."

"A job? What kind of a job? A lengthy, well-paying kind of job?"

"As long as the network likes the pilot, yes."

"Cool," says Bradley. "Wait--pilot? Network?"

"HBO, to be precise. Just the sort of place you should be aiming for."

"What-- _America?_ When did we talk about this?"

"I have had several telephone conversations with you on the subject."

"Those don't count! You just speak and I make the right noises. I don't actually _listen_."

"Regardless, you have this opportunity, and I think you could do very well."

"Scarlett, I am not Hugh Laurie. I'm sure this can only go badly."

"Look at the script," she says, thrusting it into his hands. "Come back when you've seen sense."

Bradley steadfastly ignores the script until much later that night, when there's nothing on the television except Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand on separate channels. He carefully pulls it out of his bag and hesitates, aware that the script will probably be so wonderful he will love it immediately and be forced to eat his own proverbial hat.

This turns out to be a very accurate assumption because, after an hour of feverishly reading every line, he calls up Scarlett to praise and grovel. She doesn't answer the phone, because it's the early hours of the morning and if she's not tending to her most recent infant, she's probably in bed. Bradley gives up and tries to calm the butterflies of excitement in his stomach, but then he catches sight of how much they're willing to _pay_ him to do this and has another bout of hyperventilation.

He rings Colin.

"Bradley?"

"Hey, did I wake you?"

"No, no, it's fine," Colin reassures, even though he's blatantly lying. "What's up?"

"I've got a job offer."

"Hmm?"

"And I really like it."

"Uh huh."

"And they'll pay some ludicrous amount of money for it."

"So...?"

"It's in America, Col."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

There's a lengthy pause and some kind of rustling on the other end of the line. Bradley rests his head on the coffee table and waits for Colin to say something.

"So, what?" says Colin. "You asking my permission or something? 'Cause you've got it. Go for it."

"Really?"

"Yeah, if it's what you want to do."

"But I don't know if I do, that's the thing."

"Bradley," sighs Colin, sounding tired and exasperated. "Just do it, yeah? You want to, your agent wants you to and I want whatever you want."

"But--" says Bradley, but Colin carries on.

"I'm sure America isn't that bad. You're a posh white boy--they'll love you. You'll be the next Hugh Laurie or something."

"Colin--"

"'Night, Bradley. I'll call you tomorrow, okay? Bye."

Turns out they film most of it in Canada anyway, which makes breaking the news to his mother that much easier.

"Oh, wonderful!" she says. "We can come and visit--I've always wanted to try skiing."

"So, you think I should take the job?"

"You do whatever you want, dear. I'll support you, whatever you choose."

Bradley wishes people would stop saying that, since it's obviously the most absolutely pants answer in the history of the universe.

Scarlett smiles extra wide when he finally caves and says, "Where do I sign?"

Bradley feels a little like he's signing away his soul, but is more upset that it feels like he's signing away Colin.

-

Colin's doing some kind of artsy project and can't get away, so Angel helps Bradley pack the last of his stuff.

"It's a long way away, Bradley," she says, packing saucepans into a box, voicing the very thing he's been ignoring.

"Could be further," he says. "Could be Australia or something."

"Yeah, maybe," she says. "Only-- This isn't some kind of rebellion, is it?"

"Rebellion?"

"Yeah, like maybe you've gotten sick of us all and now you want to get as far away as possible. Or something, I don't know."

"Angel!" he says, shocked. "That's not it. I'm not sick of you. How could I be sick of you? You're my best friends."

"Yeah," she sighs, and sits down on a box. "Colin's upset, you know."

"What?"

"He won't say it, but he is. In that way men can be."

"Well," he says, then he realises she's crying. "Angel--"

"Oh, don't mind me," she hiccoughs. "It's nothing, really, I--"

"Angel," he says, and pulls her up into a hug. She presses her face into his shoulder and says, shakily,

"Don't be a stranger, okay? You'll come back and see us?"

"Of course I will," he says, smoothing her hair.

"It's just--We'll miss you. Things won't--Colin especially."

"I'll miss you too," he whispers. "But it's not forever."

"Better not be," she says, pushing him away with a smile, wiping her eyes. "Look at me. I'll just--"

She goes to the bathroom and Bradley hears her blow her nose loudly.

Later, when Angel is gone and everything is packed, Bradley falls asleep on his bare mattress in a sleeping bag. When he wakes up in the morning, he catches himself wondering why there aren't any crimson bedcurtains, so maybe going somewhere completely new, doing something completely different, isn't such a bad idea after all.

-

When Bradley's settled into his new flat-- _apartment_ \--and made sure that the essentials are working--electricity, plumbing, internet--there's an email waiting for him.

 _Bradley-- Hope you're okay, living wherever it is you're living. I don't think I could do what you're doing. Thought I'd email, seeing as long-distance international calls don't really fit in my budget. You are an expensive man, James. Katie got very upset last night, missing you. She insisted we watch your favourite film. I endured for the sake of friendship. Keep me updated, okay? --Colin_

Bradley smiles and sends back,

 _Don't knock_ Dirty Dancing _, it is a classic, you barbarian. Miss you all. P.S. It's Vancouver, Geography-tard. Get an atlas._

He sleeps on the floor under a heap of jackets because he has no furniture, and dreams of vixens' screams and frosty mornings.

-

On his first real day on the job, the first all-cast read-through, Bradley is terrified out of his wits. There are so many actors, familiar and unfamiliar, milling around and talking with their funny, nasal accents, he feels overwhelmed and alienated. It reminds him of when he first met Colin, but at least Colin was only from Ireland, where they have the decency to drink tea without ice in it.

"You're that guy, aren't you?" says someone behind him.

Bradley turns around. "Depends which guy you mean, I suppose."

"You know," she says. She's pretty--well, most of the people in the room are, incongruously so--with absurdly straight teeth. "That guy. Uh, Merlin?"

"No," he corrects. "I was Arthur."

"Oh, right!" she says. "With that guy from _Buffy_."

"Yeah, that's the one."

"Cool. So, what're you doing here?"

"I'm playing 'Jonathan'," he replies, still feeling bewildered whilst having a niggling sense he should be offended instead.

"The college professor? Really?"

"Yeah, I keep having all these nightmares that the costume department will outsource all of my jumpers from my grandfather or something."

He gives a half-hearted laugh, but she only looks baffled.

"Sweaters," he says, belatedly.

-

"Bradley, slightly more to the left? Yeah, that's good. Hold there."

Bradley fights the urge to wipe his face with the sleeve of his jumper, which does indeed seem uncannily like something his grandfather would wear. It's a toss-up between two evils: baked under the midday sun or eaten by mosquitoes in the shade of the trees. Today's filming involves a lot of running and being slathered with fake blood, being made to heft the largest monkey wrench the prop guys could find. He wishes it would just be over already, so he can go home and collapse in front of _Farscape_ repeats.

"Okay, guys. More yelling this time--lots of anger. Let's keep that energy up! Okay, and...Action."

Bradley suppresses a sigh and charges down the hill, roaring at the top of his lungs, ready to rescue his ex-girlfriend's daughter from her bigamist captors. Or something. He's not really sure.

-

"...and it's very new and very exciting, and I'm extremely happy to be involved in it."

The interviewer smiles in a way that Bradley sympathises with. He doesn't really have any idea what this show he's involved in is about either. Only that it's very exciting, possibly a little too artsy and sophisticated for its own good and he now substitutes sword-fighting for household objects and occasional gunplay. But then, he hasn't seen an entire episode cut together yet, so maybe things will clear up soon.

"That's great," she says, still grinning in that fixed sort of way. "Now, most people watching will know you from the BBC show _Merlin_. How have you found the transition between the two places, both career and lifestyle-wise?"

"Well," he says, pausing to collect a suitable answer. "In terms of jobs, they are incredibly different. Not just the genre or the characters, but the crew as well. I've gotten soft, working with the _Merlin_ crew all these years, so it's a little disorientating, working with new people and getting used to the way things are done. And I've had to get to grips with the differences between American and British television, which mainly boil down to working hours."

"And how do you find living over here?"

"It's different," he says, then nearly grinds to halt because he can't think of anything else to say. "Er--I miss things, you know. Marmite. Baked beans. Proper beer. Family, friends, all that."

"Do you miss your old cast-mates? Since you worked with them for so long, you must be close to them."

"Colin is my best friend," he says, confident. "Me being here and him being elsewhere doesn't change that. And of course I miss him and everybody else, but it's not like I won't see them again." He grins, probably in the way Colin always describes as 'dopey'. "I'll be back before they can even form nostalgic memories of me."

-

One time, Bradley gets home from a particularly exhausting night shoot and slumps down in his desk chair to find a light blinking at him softly, announcing the arrival of an email from Colin. He sits there for at least a minute, transfixed, with no idea what to do. Then comprehension trickles back into his mind and all the buttons seem to make sense again. He brings up the message:

 _Bradley--how's things? I hope your new job is going will--I keep having people come up to me and ask me about it, like_ I _know anything._

 _I'm doing this music project at the moment. I'm sure we're terrible, but you should come see us play._

 _Missing you. When does filming finish? Are you coming back to the UK after?--Colin_

Bradley thinks about writing back, but when he looks down at the keyboard, the letters seem to sway and it makes his head hurt. He resolves to answer in the morning, when he isn't so close to a state of vegetative coma.

He eats a slice of bread to assuage his cramping hunger and washes it down with some drowsy cough medicine, temporarily flummoxed by the childproof cap. He collapses into bed and, for once, sleeps dreamlessly.

-

Towards the end of filming, his American agent calls him up and says she's landed him an audition for a small part in a film.

"Just the kind of break-out role people kill for," she says.

Bradley can't think of a reason why not to do it and, for the first time ever, he goes into an audition and the director takes one look at him and says, in a Chicago accent so broad it's almost comedic,

"Oh, darling, you're perfect. Just perfect. You got it. You got the job, now get out."

He wobbles back out into the corridor and asks the bland, chain-smoking assistant, "Is it always like this?"

"Fuck, no," she snorts.

-

Bradley comes back home the minute filming is over. He hadn't noticed before, but as soon as he's booked the flight, he wants to be back in Britain more strongly than anything.

When the plane touches down, it feels so viscerally right that he has to stand still and just breathe for a minute, in case he starts doing a Kevin Costner impression and kisses the ground or something. As he stands gormlessly at the baggage carousel, he thinks he hears a jeering crowd, the beat of drums, but there's a greasy teenager standing next to him and she's probably just listening to her iPod too loudly.

-

The first thing he does is visit his mother, who feeds him so much 'good, British food' that he won't pine for Yorkshire puddings for at least three months.

"You look tired, dear," she keeps saying.

"Jetlag, mum," he tells her. "My internal clock's just wonky."

He hasn't been sleeping well, mostly because his body is still thoroughly convinced that dawn should occur sometime after midday, but when he does sleep, it's fitful and he wakes up distinctly unrested.

He goes back to London to visit Colin, who greets him at Paddington station with a grin that outshines the sun.

"Look at you," he says. "Fatter already."

"What?!" Bradley cries, clutching a hand to his stomach. "No, I'm not! Am I?"

Colin just laughs and carries Bradley's bag across the station, ignoring his running commentary of: "Not fat at all--how could you suggest--I'm not getting fat, am I, Colin? Colin, _am I?_ "

Colin hails a cab, then looks a bit sheepish when Bradley raises an eyebrow.

"Why have a car in the city?" he says. "An oyster card is just as good. And don't forget, you took the train here, so no more raising of eyebrows, thanks."

"Yeah, so I could sleep on the journey. I'm given to understand that's generally frowned upon when driving."

"Jetlagged?"

"Yeah, like death."

"Not up to dinner out, then?"

"Oh, no, by that time I'll be wide-awake. Dinnertime is my internal elevensies."

"Cool. Thai alright? Or we could do steak and kidney pie if you've been pining."

"No, my mother more than made up for that."

"Thai it is, then."

They have dinner with Colin's eclectic, slightly mad mates in some kind of Thai hippy soup-kitchen place. Colin seems extraordinarily happy, laughing loudly and telling Bradley all about the play he's been working on.

"One night only," he says, "Only been rehearsing a couple of weeks. You'll come, right?"

"Of course I will," says Bradley. "Though, why's it showing only one night?"

"Maximise bums on seats," says Colin, promptly.

When Bradley frowns in confusion, a girl in a violet trilby says, "We don't think many people will come."

"But it'll be cool," reassures Colin. "Art and all that. Aiming for critical, rather than public, acclaim."

"That is utter balls, Morgan," someone says.

"Yeah, well," Colin says, blushing a little. "After that, I've made some time for you. We could do something, or just chill, you know. Whatever."

"Anything's cool."

"Come on, you're only here a week before you're jetting back--I swear you should have a longer break than this."

"I'm working on a movie," says Bradley, feeling slightly shamefaced for no good reason.

"Ooh, really? You didn't tell me that! What, Hollywood and all them lot?"

"Well, it's being filmed in Detroit, but--"

"Oh my God, Bradley, that's amazing! You never tell me anything."

"That's not true--"

"Wow," says Colin, leaning back in his chair and affectionately treading on Bradley's foot. "My mate Bradley, big movie star."

"Colin, I have _ten lines_. I haven't wrested this role from Russell Crowe or anything."

"Oh, well, in that case," says Colin. "We'd better dunk you in the Thames or something. Remind you that you're no better than the rest of us, get you back to your roots."

"But I'm not even from London!"

"At least get you smashed, then. You've been drinking so much of that American crap that you'll probably pass out after a single pint of real beer."

"We'll see," says Bradley, grinning in anticipation.

-

In defiance of expectations, he drinks Colin under the table and since Colin is in no state to remember his address and Bradley has only the vaguest idea, it makes for a very interesting journey home.

They have to randomly disembark the Tube abruptly because Colin feels queasy, but once he's finished heaving dryly into the gutter, he straightens up and says, in a pleasantly surprised tone of voice,

"Oh, look, this is my street."

He takes an age finding his keys and Bradley starts patting himself down just to join in, but then finds the missing keys in his own jacket pocket.

"How did they get there?" says Colin, giggling insensibly. "Silly me."

Bradley deposits him on the sofa and fetches a glass of water for each of them. When he sits down, Colin doesn't take his glass, surprising Bradley instead by saying,

"I've missed you, you know. So much."

"I've missed you too," says Bradley, and it's not some meaningless platitude--he means it. He really means it.

Colin gazes at him balefully and there's a moment where something could happen--where Bradley's sure something _would_ happen, if only both his hands weren't occupied with not spilling both glasses of water over either of them. Instead, it just sort of settles into comfortable silence and Colin takes his water, his fingers dry and warm against Bradley's, which are cold and slippery from condensation.

He sleeps badly on the uncomfortable sofa and wakes up when Colin shuffles into the kitchen and starts rattling mugs and clinking spoons. They sit together at the small kitchen table, hungover and nauseous, and Bradley just stares at Colin, at the stubble on his cheeks, the bags under his eyes, his fingers clasped around his mug, fingernails bitten and ragged.

He can't remember ever seeing anything so beautiful.

-

Colin's play takes Bradley right back to his drama school days; a strange mishmash of humour and drama, slapstick and poignant sadness. At the end of the second act, Colin sweeps onto the stage in long scarlet cloak and Bradley's breath catches in his throat at the sight, all his instincts screaming, _wrong_ , but then the Maharaja treads on the hem and the scene goes to disarray in a cloud of smoke and violet sparks.

When it's all over and he slides backstage, Colin runs up to him and doesn't ask if it was good.

"Did you enjoy it?" he says, instead.

"Yes," says Bradley. "Very much so."

"Including the water-pistols?"

"Including the water-pistols."

"Good," sighs Colin, and Bradley gives him an enthusiastic, back-slapping hug.

"Beer?" he says.

"Beer," agrees Colin.

-

"So, Bradley James," says the Maharaja, still wearing his magnificent turban, after a pint or two, or seven. "You have defected."

The table erupts in noise, either cheering or jeering, it's hard to tell.

"Defected?"

"To _America_ ," intones the Maharaja, and the crowd boos theatrically. "So tell us, James. Tell us of your work there."

"Not much to tell," says Bradley.

"Not good enough," someone shouts.

"Spill it!"

"Spill _what?_ "

"The beans," says the Maharaja, who shushes the table and leans forward to whisper, "Do all the actors wear beards?"

"What?!" laughs Bradley, spluttering. "What on earth do you mean? No, no, of course not."

"Well, all Americans are religious, right?"

"No, I'm pretty sure--"

"And is humanity not created in God's own image?"

"Well, some people--"

"And is God not bearded?!"

"That's not--" Bradley says, but gives up as the table erupts in cheers and everybody is suddenly wearing moustaches drawn on with eyeliner and stage make-up.

The next morning, sitting at the kitchen table with Colin, hungover--and he's sure he's spent more of these mornings with Colin hungover than not--drinking tea with a reluctant determination, he has a more sensible conversation on the matter.

"It's different," he says.

"Good different or bad different?"

"I'm not sure yet. It'll probably turn out good different--just have to get into the swing of things."

"Tell me about your character," Colin says.

"Not much there yet."

"You've had an entire season on him, Bradley, you must know something about your character."

"Well," says Bradley, spinning his mug idly. "There are so many different writers and so many last-minute changes to the script--and I mean being emailed two scenes the night before a shoot, completely different from the last time you saw them, all the dialogue changed, the set scrapped."

"We've had that before, couple of times."

"Yeah, but--It seems like I never got the time to know my character, because everything's always in motion. With Arthur, I always knew what he would do, exactly how he would react to a situation. But with Jonathan-- I don't --" He sighs. "Jonathan could be a serial killer, for all I know."

"Be exciting, though? Wouldn't it?"

"Yeah, maybe," Bradley laughs. "Don't know how they'd manage to crowbar in more blood past the censors."

"Violent?"

"Hell, yeah. The more bludgeoning, the better. Usually with household items."

"What kind of household items?"

"Guess."

"I don't know," says Colin, looking around the room. "A mug. Have you committed grievous bodily harm with a mug?"

"Think heavier."

"A kettle?"

"An iron."

"An iron? Turned on?"

"Yep. A sizzling club of death."

"Whoa."

"Yeah," says Bradley, laughing at the memory. "After I watched that scene back, I didn't do any ironing for a week. I hid it in a cupboard and when I came into costume in the morning, the girls would laugh because they knew exactly why all my clothes were creased--"

"I love you," says Colin.

A pause.

"What?" says Bradley.

"I love you," says Colin again, more slowly, like he's trying it on for size.

"Oh," says Bradley. "What kind of love are we talking about, here?"

"Well, it depends."

"On what?"

"On the way you feel," says Colin. "See, if you feel one way, then it's the kind of love between best friends who never lose touch, no matter how far apart they are, and are best man at each others' weddings. That kind of love."

"Or?"

"Or, if you feel the other way, like you'd want a relationship and you think it would work, then it's the kind of love that Michael Buble sings about in ballads and--"

"I can't live without you," says Bradley.

"Yeah," says Colin. "That kind of love."

After a moment, Bradley reaches across the table and takes Colin's hand.

"The second one," he says, just to be clear, and Colin's smile is more wonderful than ever, or maybe he's just looking more closely now.

-

The night before Bradley flies back, he dreams.

He dreams he is astride a great horse, looking out over a sunlit vista. It is beautiful. On the edge of the woodland, there are shadows that flit and dance between the trees--deer. He realises there's a spear in his hand and there are men beside him, tense with anticipation.

"Dismount," he says. "From here, we go on foot."

In the morning, when Colin wakes him with a gentle, bristly kiss, he does not remember his dream.

-

Detroit is, again, a totally different world.

Working on the film, he gets to see parts of the city he's pretty sure wouldn't be included in a package holiday. The contrast between the wealth of the centre and the poverty of the outskirts shocks him, but then all cities are like that, to some extent. The people are friendly, always interested in his accent, but there's none of the easiness of Vancouver. He feels like an outsider, a strange urge to jump the river and escape to Ontario.

Filming is a challenge. Bradley's so used to swinging either a sword or a wrench by this point that he's sort of at a loss as to what to do with other long pieces of metal.

"It's a shotgun, Bradley," the director says, rolling his eyes. "Try to act like you know what to do with it. Or at least what end bullets come out of."

He's distracted, he knows he is. If being far away from Colin was hard before, it's unendurable now. His long distance bill is already twice the length it was before and he's having trouble sleeping, which is absurd, since he can count the number of times he's slept in the same bed as Colin on his fingers.

Luckily, most of his scenes consist of him standing behind Tom Hanks, looking threatening. It's not difficult, but it is sort of insulting, being plucked from the upper-echelons of the television industry and being thrown at the lowest rungs of the filmmaking ladder. Bradley gets, on average, a line every four scenes and he tries to put as much depth into them as possible, but sometimes there's such a thing as trying too hard.

So he settles for standing behind Tom Hanks, trying to tread the fine line between threatening, axe-crazy and piss bored.

-

Because he's playing the bodyguard-slash-aide character, he's present in most of Tom Hanks's scenes, packing both a semi-automatic and a ring-binder. Occasionally, he has to hand him a piece of paper or shove him under a desk, shouting, "Stay down!"

This should probably be embarrassing, but Tom somehow makes it not so.

One scene, things are turned on its head a little, when Tom writes something down and hands it to Bradley, a welcome change from the monotony. But every take, the writing on the paper, which is meant to read, 'Mary - 14 Brooke Street', gets steadily dirtier and dirtier and Bradley has a progressively harder time keeping a straight face.

"Cut!" calls the director, getting pissy after the fifth time Bradley's fluffed it. "Bradley--"

"It's not my fault, sir!" snorts Bradley, giggling. "The other boys keep making me laugh."

"You snitch!" says Tom. "Sir, it's not true, nothing James ever says is true, and that's the truth, sir!"

They break for lunch before they can get the scene right. Tom turns out to be a fan of _Merlin_ and they spend half an hour talking about the show and the legend. It's good, but he wishes Colin was there.

-

After his sojourn past the glitzy veneer of Hollywood filmmaking, work starts on the second season of _Maintenance One_. The producers cheerfully open their first meeting with him by telling him that, over the first half of the season, they'll be working on Jonathan's character development.

"And then, after the winter break, he'll be this season's B-villain," one of them says.

"A serial killer," says the other, with perhaps too much enthusiasm. "So, what do you say?"

"Cool," says Bradley, only half-truthfully, already envisaging the long night-shoots and endless stunt re-sets.

He rings up his American agent and bitches.

"Well, I've been hearing good things about your work on that film. Maybe you won't be in _Maintenance_ much longer," she says.

"Oh, please," begs Bradley. "If anything comes through--and I mean _anything_ , I'll play a paedophile or the elephant man, whatever--just say yes. I'll approve it later."

"That's not necessary," she says. "But if anything suitable comes up, I'll tell you as soon as possible."

"Thanks, Julia," he says. "But, seriously, _paedophile_."

-

"But I thought you really wanted to do this series," says Colin.

"Well, yeah," says Bradley, shifting the phone to his shoulder as he loads the washing machine. "But it's kind of like a new relationship. The honeymoon period is over now--I'm getting fed up of the producers nicking my socks."

"We don't have a honeymoon period," says Colin. "Do we?"

"Oh, ours was over long ago."

"Oh, yeah? When would that be?"

"I'm talking years here, Col. We had our honeymoon in the first series of _Merlin_. Don't you remember, we had that really big fight in France? It was about something really petty."

"You mislaid my script."

"Like I said, petty. But anyway, I don't like the way the American do things. It's just not my style."

"So what are you going to do?"

"Film, hopefully. I've given Julia specific instruction that I will play anything."

"You may regret that," says Colin, laughing.

"Or not," says Bradley. "But how are things with you? You got anything lined up?"

"Yeah, next week, I'm taking part in this London-wide performance art project that Harriet's organising. I'm in the Tate Modern, doing a performance of Macbeth."

"And what's modern about it?"

"The set and costumes are all designed by nut-jobs. We're still working out whether we can make the whole thing glow-in-the-dark."

"I wish I was there," Bradley sighs.

"I know. I wish you were here, too."

-

Bradley gets another small part for the winter break and is pulled in for various publicity events on the Tom Hanks number, mostly in Europe. It's frustrating, being in the same continent as Colin, but not having the time to go see him. Ferried from appearance to appearance with barely a free five minutes in his schedule, his sleep patterns grow more fragmented, his dreams more vivid.

Often, when he wakes, he has trouble remembering where he is.

He gets a week off at Christmas and spends only two days of it with Colin. When he apologises for their lack of time together, Colin just shakes his head and says,

"You look terrible."

"Just tired," says Bradley, and he is.

-

Just before he has to go back to _Maintenance One_ , Bradley turns up to the premiere of the Tom Hanks thing. If he had a choice, he probably wouldn't go, but Julia and Scarlett unite in some kind of cross-Atlantic special relationship and order him to attend and mingle.

"Talk to people," Julia insists. "Directors, actors, musicians--anybody. Make an impression. We want more work out of this."

Bradley is sure that getting him work is what he pays _them_ to do, but they both remain deaf to his arguments. He goes alone, because there's only one person he'd really like to take and Colin hadn't been able to afford the plane ticket at such short notice.

He steps out of the car, onto the carpet, into a wall of flashing lights and screaming people and, for a moment, he loses track of his surroundings, has no clue what he's doing there, but then he hears a shout.

"James! James, over here!"

He fairly stumbles in that direction and Tom grabs his arm and pulls him in, saying, "And this guy, this guy's great. Bradley James, my sidekick. Gotta love him."

"Sidekick?" says Bradley indignantly, as all the reporters swing their cameras on him. "It is my firmly held belief that _you_ are _my_ sidekick, Hanks."

"Yeah, yeah. That's what they all think," says Tom, turning back to some girl from Vanity Fair or something. Bradley feels a bit out of place and adrift, but then a woman in a demure blue gown shakes his hand and says,

"Rita Wilson."

"Bradley James."

"Tom's wife," she says, smiling. "Pleased to meet you."

"Pleased to meet you," says Bradley. "I'm his co-star."

 _"You liar, James."_

"--his dogsbody," he corrects. "This is my first film."

"Really?" she says. "Well, I'll be watching closely, then. I hope I like what I see."

Bradley weaves unsteadily down the carpet, talking to the occasional journalist, feeling a distinct sense of either trepidation or excitement, he's not sure which. One over-eager woman, brandishing a notepad, asks him who he's wearing.

"I don't quite understand what you're asking," he says. She doesn't appear to have an answer to that, so he moves on.

After the showing of the film, where there is much clapping and congratulating, Bradley has a glass or two of champagne to psyche himself up to mingle with the guests. Thankfully, this is entirely unnecessary because Rita hauls him away almost immediately and deposits him in a knot of very smartly dressed people.

It transpires that Rita is, among other things, a highly respected producer.

"And I liked what I saw," she says.

Bradley leaves the conversation in the secure knowledge that he's made Julia several new friends and that he somehow has to fit in at least three auditions before he begins filming again.

"Oh, I'm so glad," says Julia, when he rings her the next day. Bradley feels disappointed. He had been hoping she'd recognise the opportunity to say, "Well done, my apprentice."

-

He attends the auditions with the usual sort of not-very-expectant hope, going through the scenes with his best likeable idiocy. For one of them, he doesn't utter a single line, just chats with the directors and the producers instead, and it's only when he finds himself sitting across from Jessica Alba that he realises he may have just walked into the role without trying very hard.

After he and Jessica run through the audition scene, a long, sweet dialogue, the casting directors all put their heads together and mutter furiously. He catches something about, "Not the right chemistry," and immediately wants to ask to do it again, because he wasn't on the ball, obviously, because it's _Jessica Alba_ , of course the dynamic isn't down yet, they've only just met--

Jessica leaves quickly, something about an interview or a magazine shoot, and she kisses Bradley goodbye, leaving him slightly dizzy and wanting grandchildren, just so he could tell this story in years to come. The director sends him away, saying they would call him, which he doesn't believe. He completely forgets about it all for a couple days because Angel rings him up and announces she's getting married and that he must make arrangements to be free during the second weekend of September. Immersed in frantic phone calls, trying to wrangle a blood promise from his agent that he can have the time off, he doesn't really notice when he gets called back for another audition.

He feels like fainting when they wheel in Anne Hathaway. He nearly does, half an hour later, when all the executives start nodding at one another and saying things like, "When can we sign the contract?"

-

The producers of _Maintenance One_ don't quite believe it either and it takes a very terse phone call from Julia for them to finally get around to writing him out of the script. Bradley films his climactic death scene six weeks later, attends the wrap party for a slightly stilted hour and a half and gets the next flight to the UK. He takes the Gatwick Express up to Victoria and reflects that, since he's about to appear in a film with Anne Hathaway, he must have garnered enough celebrity points to merit being picked up from the airport by a chauffeur. Or at least a cab.

Colin's waiting at the train station for him and Bradley gives in to the urge to hug him, because if he hasn't got enough celebrity points on his loyalty card to hug his secret-boyfriend in public, then he doesn't really want to be in this scheme anymore.

"You're in the Metro today," says Colin, grinning like the Devil before torture.

"I know," says Bradley, heavily. He'd been handed three different free newspapers on his journey from Gatwick and, in two of them, there'd been a little column announcing that Anne Hathaway was going to star in a romcom next year, accompanied by up-and-comer Bradley James.

Thankfully, there hadn't been a photo.

"But you're not wearing a hat and sunglasses!" says Colin. "People will recognise you. We might get assaulted by paparazzi."

"I highly doubt it," says Bradley, but there's a group of business intern-types just over Colin's shoulder that are looking in his direction, over-casually. "But, just in case, let's go. I don't want to be trapped in Victoria train station by a ravenous horde of journalists."

"Yeah, I think you need to appear in a couple more romcoms before you can advance to zombie flicks."

-

He dreams he is tied up, beaten, bloodied, left dying by a fireside. A large, bearded man spits in his face and grinds it in with the sole of his boot.

They leave him, suddenly, and he is grateful. Maybe he will die in peace. Then,

"Get the girl. He's useless dead."

Some scuffling, terse words, then a girl in a ragged dress is kneeling at his side, wrists marked by recent bonds, her arm curiously tattooed.

"I have been told," she says, "to heal your wounds, but leave you crippled."

He tries to suck in a breath, but his ribs hurt too much. Instead, his throat burns and his eyes sting. The world seems to darken.

"So you must act it," she whispers, laying a cool hand on his brow, and her touch is like the sun breaking through cloud.

-

"Busking," says Bradley, disbelieving. "Really, Colin?"

"A man's got to eat," Colin replies breezily. "And for a man to eat, he's got to have money. Or depend on soup kitchens."

"But you could just get a _job_ ," says Bradley, slightly afraid that Colin has indeed been relying on soup kitchens and the YMCA in his absence. "Honestly, you're a recognised BBC actor--you could do far better than busking easily."

"Yeah, but it wouldn't be half as much fun, would it?" says Colin, grinning.

Bradley is afraid Colin's finally done it. Gone irrevocably snooker-loopy.

"But I just don't see why you would _choose_ \--"

"--Look, Bradley, just drop it, will you?"

He could go on, but he doesn't want to fight, not when they have so little time to spend together. "I just want to make sure you're happy."

"I am happy," says Colin, seriously. "That's the point."

An awkward silence follows. Bradley hates arguing with Colin. It doesn't happen very often, so when it does, it comes as more of a shock. He tries to laugh it off, makes a funny face and says,

"There's a moral here, isn't there?"

"Yes, Bradley," says Colin, smiling, "there's a moral here. But don't go blowing any fuses trying to figure it out. We're still cool."

"Cool," says Bradley, and it is cool. Several of Colin's eccentrically dressed mates turn up, producing a variety of instruments. Bradley mostly just stands around watching while they set up, until one girl hands him some egg shakers. When he looks a bit sceptical, she just says,

"Move it and groove it to the rhythm, baby."

He's still dubious about the prospect of 'moving and grooving' on a busy London street and he's just about to ask Colin for some reassurance, but then somebody yells, "Get your bodhran out, Morgan!" which is somehow the funniest thing he's heard all day.

Colin indeed get his bodhran out--

"No euphemism intended, this is a family performance,"

\--and Bradley feels at a bit of a loss, at first, standing around on the street, shaking along to the beat as they make their music. The public swarms by, mostly ignoring them. After a while, some of them start throwing funny looks, maybe wondering why on earth _Bradley James_ is standing on the street, making music with some unshaven, homeless-looking artsy types, but he pays no attention. There is no reason why he shouldn't be here instead of back in LA, rubbing elbows with whoever's 'in' right now. He's not high and he's not mighty.

In fact, when he looks at Colin's radiant, smiling face, he feels pretty lowly in comparison.

-

The day before Bradley flies to New York, Colin gets a phone call.

"Oh my God--" he says, hand over his mouth. "What happened? Is she--?"

A worried pause.

"Uh huh," he says, sitting down on the sofa abruptly. Bradley excuses himself to the kitchen and comes back just as the conversation ends. He wraps Colin's fingers around a mug of tea and sits beside him.

"Is everything okay?"

Colin sighs and stares into his tea. After a minute, he says, "It's my mother. She's sick."

But Bradley hears somebody else say those words, has such a profound sense of deja vu that he can _see_ it. Sitting in front of a blazing fire, the gleam of a helmet in the corner, the deep blue of a neckerchief.

"I have to go see her," says Merlin.

"I'll go with you," says Bradley, already mentally packing a saddlebag.

But then Colin says, "What? No, don't be ridiculous, you start filming on Tuesday," and things melt back into place again.

"What?"

"Well, what would you say to them? 'Sorry, but I can't make it to set this week because my secret boyfriend's mother is a bit poorly'? I'll go by myself, it's fine."

"But--"

"Seriously, it's fine, Bradley. I'm a big boy, I can go by myself."

Bradley's so wigged out by his little hallucination that he can't formulate an argument and ends up booking the soonest, cheapest plane ticket to Belfast he can find while Colin frantically packs.

Colin leaves in the early hours of next morning. Bradley's still mostly asleep for his goodbye-kiss and wakes up cold and bereft sometime around midday, seriously considering telling the producers to go fuck themselves. Then he imagines the disappointment on Anne Hathaway's face, feels a deep sense of paralysing guilt at the idea of standing up a beautiful woman and can't get up the balls any more.

-

"Call me 'Annie'," she says.

"Sorry?" Bradley replies.

"Call me 'Annie'," she repeats, smiling that lovely, lovely smile. "All of my friends do."

"Oh," he says, reeling slightly with the implication that he, Bradley James, is Anne Hathaway's friend.

"It'd be weird otherwise," she continues. "With us working together and everything. It'd be like filming with my great-aunt or something."

Bradley laughs, but can't think of anything to say after that, so there's a pause that, to her, is probably a little awkward, but to him is a crevasse filled with churning humiliation. Anne Hathaway-- _Annie_ \--fills it for him, to his great relief.

"So what about you?"

"What about me?"

"What do you call yourself, Bradley James?"

"Oh, just--" he says. "Just Bradley. Not really had any nicknames." _Or at least, none suitable for ladies' ears._

"Just Bradley?" she says, grinning. "Nobody ever call you 'Brad'?"

"No," says Bradley, firmly. "No, I am definitely not a 'Brad'."

"Really? I think you could be," she says, and he desperately hopes she's joking. "Maybe I'll call you that from now on."

"No, no, please, _please_ don't!"

"Why not? It's a perfectly good name. If Brad Pitt can do it, so can you. Or are you not half the man Brad Pitt is, Bradley James?"

"I haven't had half the _career_ Brad Pitt has," he says, on the verge of getting on his knees and begging. "Please, Annie, I'll never live it down."

"What will you give me in return for not calling you it?" she says, smiling like the Cheshire Cat, but Bradley is thankfully spared from promising her his first born--who is, in any case, unlikely to appear--by the director coming back from his coffee break with loads of new ideas to shout about. Bradley hurries to his mark and privately thinks that, if he weren't as bent as under-sink piping, he would already be hopelessly in love with Annie.

-

The Met Office forecasts thundery showers for Angel's wedding, but they never arrive. The weather stays stubbornly sunny all day, lighting up her radiant smile. Bradley reckons that, if there were a God, this would be His work, because Angel would have been beautiful whatever the weather, but now she is even more so.

He sits with Colin and Katie in the row behind her family. Katie cries throughout the ceremony, daintily, into a handkerchief that matches her hat. Colin sniffs a couple of times and Bradley takes his hand. The smile he gets back is a little wobbly.

The reception is an embarrassing affair, being hauled off to dance with Angel's miniature cousins, and it's much later in the evening when Bradley finally gets a dance out of the bride. They sway along to Spandau Ballet on a mostly empty dancefloor, all the parents with young children long since left.

"I can't believe you're married," he says.

"I assure you, it happened," she says, laughing brightly. "I saw it with my own eyes. I'm certain you were present."

"Yeah, but still. It's weird."

"Weird how?"

"I don't know, like you're a proper adult now."

"Bradley, I have been a 'proper adult' for many years now! So have you, if you hadn't noticed."

"Yeah, but I don't count. I'm not married. I don't have children."

"I don't have children yet either!"

"But you'll probably have them soon!"

"Bradley," she says, and she punctuates it by treading on his foot. "I indeed may have children in the future, but that is none of your concern. What are you worrying about? This isn't some kind of anti-mid-life crisis, is it?"

"No, no, I've just been feeling a bit...funny, lately."

"You shouldn't. You've got a career going, at least. Anne Hathaway on your arm, I hear."

"That's not true, you know that--"

"I'm only teasing," she says. "I know you and Colin are very happy."

That startles him, makes him misstep. "How did you--"

"Colin told me," she says. "It wasn't a secret, was it?"

"Not really," he replies. "I just didn't know you knew, that's all."

"Well, don't worry, I haven't shouted it from the rooftops. I know how private a person Colin is."

"Thanks, Angel."

She looks at him, and Bradley feels an overwhelming surge of love for her. "You make him so happy, you know."

Her words seem to echo as Bradley glances at Colin over her shoulder, sitting at the edge of the dancefloor, watching. When he looks back at Angel, she's wearing a different dress. Her hair is more elaborately styled and she seems younger, but more tired.

He loves her, desperately, but not the way she deserves. His love for her boils sour in his gut as the people cheer and clap around them, but she does not love him that way either. There is another. His lingering anger at her infidelity dampens, though, when he thinks of his own. He spots Merlin's face across the room, listening to a lady, but not really listening. His eyes burn with jealousy and Bradley burns with guilt.

He stumbles, trips over his own feet and just barely keeps his balance as the world spins and he can't tell what he's really seeing, stained glass or lasers. Angel guides him to the edge of the dancefloor, where Katie is sitting a little lopsidedly, muttering something about drunkards and their place at weddings.

That night, he is afraid to sleep, afraid to dream. He stays awake for as long as possible, watching Colin sleep, wondering what he dreams of. In the morning, the shadows chased away, he feels silly and embarrassed.

-

"Are you sure about this?" Julia asks him, watching him carefully from across her desk, worrying at the lid of a pen.

"What's there to be sure about?" says Bradley. "Of course I want to do it. You know how much I admire the director."

"It's just very different from all your previous work, that's all."

"That's a good thing, isn't it? I don't want to get type-cast as the dick with a heart of gold. I want to try something new."

"You know," she says, looking slightly alarmed, "when you said you'd play a paedophile, I did assume that you were kidding."

"This is not the same thing," he insists. "I was desperate for work then and I wouldn't say that a paedophile is my dream role, but can't you understand the scope of a character like that? That's why I want this job."

"That's why you want to be known as a man who helped oppress an entire people?"

"Look, it's a moral film. The people in question kill me at the end. I talked it over with Annie and she reckons it'll be great."

"But you're missing such an opportunity with the Austen project--"

"Julia, there will always be films of Austen. I may never get tipped for a role like this again. Please get me an audition, Julia."

"All right," she says, finally. "An audition. We'll see how it goes, then review whether you want the part still."

"Cool," says Bradley. He aces the audition and feels a little guilty when he next sees Julia and she realises that her dream of him playing a Mr Darcy lookalike is unlikely to bear fruit just yet.

Scheduling is tight, so he only has a week between filming _The Clock Is Ticking_ with Annie and flying to New Zealand to start preparing for his next project. He and Colin don't see each other, because Colin's tied up in Belfast with some theatre, but it's okay. They'll see each other, somehow. Bradley has faith that his rapidly expanding bank account will make bending space and time that much easier.

-

When he finally makes it to New Zealand, he sleeps for fifteen hours straight and wakes up, bright-eyed and refreshed, at one in the morning. With nothing else better to do and sleep unforthcoming, he rings Colin.

"So what is this film actually about?" Colin asks.

"I'm playing one of New Zealand's British settlers."

"So it's a historical piece?"

"Yeah, the film's about how the settlers take advantage of and oppress the indigenous Maori population."

"Cheerful."

"Well, it's also about the two cultures trying to understand and respect one another. "

"Oh, that's all right, then."

"But I die at the end."

"Jesus, spoil me already."

"Col, if I don't drag you to the premiere, you won't even see it in the cinema. You'll just wait until the DVD comes out and rent it from the video shop, whereupon the sales assistant will make conversation with you about the fact that your best friend and co-star of _Merlin_ was 'really quite good in it, shame he had to die at the end'."

"It won't go exactly like that," says Colin, with a slightly sulky tone.

"No, hopefully they'll say that I was 'really quite excellent' instead."

Colin changes the subject with the subtlety of a rhinoceros. "What time is it, over there?"

"The early hours. Jet lag sucks."

"I'm having lunch. Steak pie."

"Lucky bastard."

"That I am. Listen, try and sleep, yeah? Or your body-clock won't adjust."

"Easy for you to say."

"Well, swing by the hotel pool and tire yourself out or something. Go for a run."

Bradley does just that and, aided by a drowsy anti-histamine, manages to scrape in another four hours of forced, restless sleep. The next afternoon, he attends a cast meeting with several other jet-lagged British actors and their bleary-eyed, worn out presence makes him feel something close to the norm for the first time in months.

-

In his dreams, he watches a woman burn. The acrid smell of her flesh makes his throat close, makes him wish he could do as the court ladies do and clutch a handkerchief to his mouth and nose. Morgana isn't present. She will be punished for it, later, for hiding from the sight and the smell and the screams.

She won't stop _screaming_.

It haunts his dreams later, dreams within a dream. He wakes in cold sweat twice; once in a stone room draped with red and gold, once in a beige hotel room, the wail of sirens outside. He dozes fitfully until morning and spends the day exhausted, starting at sudden noises.

-

Katie's in Australia, for reasons she never really makes clear, so she rings him up one day and says,

"James, I'm coming over. Make ready for my arrival,"

and turns up on set twenty-four hours later. Bradley is uneasy at the thought of seeing her, maybe even afraid that he'll look at her and see something else.

But it's only Katie, wearing large sunglasses and wellingtons.

"An assistant lent them to me," she says, waving some red stilettos at him. "Ruin these, otherwise. So muddy, this film business."

He hugs her and she kisses the air next to his cheek, careful not to smear him with lipstick. "It's good to see you, Katie."

"And you. Doing well for yourself, aren't you? Though that is the most ridiculous hat I have ever seen you wear, congratulations."

"And what is this?" he replies, pulling her sunhat askew. "You could shade an entire East-African country under there."

"I burn easily," she says, haughtily. "Come on, then, introduce me to your co-stars. I hear this Thomas bloke is quite the dish."

He does as she asks, introducing her around, chaperoning her blatant flirtation with everyone she meets. He's on edge for the duration of her stay, sneaking sidelong glances at her, wondering if-- _when_ \--she'll turn around and he'll see another face, when he'll feel that unbearable clash between love and fear.

It doesn't happen. Katie stays her own, strikingly beautiful, self and Bradley is torn between relief and anxiety, waiting for the other penny to drop.

-

Soon after filming ends on _The Sky Weeps_ , Bradley gets invited to the premiere of _The Clock Is Ticking_. He takes Colin as his plus-one and, in a giddy moment after payday, buys him a first-class plane ticket. Colin steps off the flight with an amusingly stunned expression that's totally worth the extra cost.

"My baggage was first out of the carousel," he says, in a wondering tone. _"First."_

"I know," says Bradley, taking said baggage. "It's awful, isn't it?"

"Will it start raining fire next?" says Colin. "A plague of miscellaneous amphibians?"

"Worse. Julia has insisted I go to some ludicrously expensive place to be fitted for my suit and you're coming with me."

Colin protests loudly but, ultimately, fruitlessly. Bradley lures him, jet-lagged and complaining, to this fancy shop with the promise of sleep and a long, slow blowjob afterwards and it's a particularly unique form of torture, watching Colin be fitted for a suit. Bradley has to sit on his hands to avoid causing a public scandal.

"Have you got anything else lined up?" Colin asks, over the head of a measuring-tape-wielding assistant.

"Not yet. Got something of a break, actually."

"Coming back home?"

Bradley, who genuinely hadn't given the issue much thought until now, blinks and says, "Er, yeah. Yeah, that'd be cool."

"Cool," says Colin, grinning.

-

When he steps onto the red carpet, Bradley only just stops himself from reaching back into the car to offer Colin a hand. He solves the problem by stuffing his hands in his pockets, but Colin elbows him less than gently and scolds him for it.

Blessedly, the next person to arrive is Annie, looking even more stunning than usual.

"Hey, Brad!" she says. "Small world."

"Isn't it just?" says Bradley. "Annie, this is Colin. Colin, Annie."

"Pleased to meet you," Colin says, shaking her hand.

"No, no, it's my pleasure," she says, shooting a truly wicked look at Bradley. "I've heard so much about you."

"Really?" says Colin, in a self-satisfied tone of voice, but Bradley tugs him down the red carpet before Annie can dig her claws in any further.

She gives them a benevolent wave and says, "We'll talk later, darling," before turning to a ravenous-looking journalist.

"Did she just call you 'Brad'?" says Colin, with vindictive glee.

"Absolutely not," says Bradley. "I am not a 'Brad', nor will I ever be."

"Really? Because I'm sure she said--"

"You must have misheard."

Bradley thinks that maybe, if he denies it enough, Colin will forget about it, or at least take a hint, but after the viewing of the film, Annie sweeps over and introduces him to every casting director she knows as 'Brad'. Bradley seethes quietly and Colin snorts in a ungentlemanly way.

-

The UK is a soothing middle-ground after the hectic intensity of Los Angeles and the cool, laid-back atmosphere of New Zealand. He visits family first, brings Colin--

"You weren't here for Christmas!" his mother cries.

"Yeah, well, you know," says Bradley, helping himself to another scone. "Work and stuff. I got a couple of days off, but the flights were just too long for a trip back home to be worth it."

\--and his mother dotes, as she always does. She complains that Colin is too thin and that Bradley's getting thinner and her solution seems to be the judicious application of clotted cream to every meal.

He buys a flat in London and finagles Colin's name onto the deed through the combination of a starry-eyed real estate agent and some secretive phone calls that he pretends are to Scarlett.

"Bradley," begins Colin.

"Yes, yes, you are not my kept woman," says Bradley. "But you can't carry on living in that hovel of yours. If the council had their way, they would condemn the building. Or convert it into a school. Or a prison."

Colin purses his lips and it takes twenty more minutes of cajoling before he says, "Kensington?" in a speculative way and hesitantly signs his name.

Their first night in the new flat, Bradley dreams about fields of wheat and long riding trips, the pounding of hooves, but he doesn't wake in damp terror and, in the morning, remembers it only vaguely and forgets about it completely after he gets out of bed. He thinks maybe that the dreams are calming down, going away, and hopes desperately that he is right.

-

Those weeks in spring are heady, filled with trips to see plays, museums, walks in Hyde Park. Bradley does not dream in four consecutive nights, then five, then nine, and walks around in a consistently good mood, satisfied that this episode is over.

Until one day, in Homebase of all places, Colin turns away from a display of gloss paint and says,

"Would you run back and get another light bulb? One of the energy saving ones."

Only Bradley also hears him say, "Don't forget to pick up your sword from the armoury on your way out. I had it re-sharpened," over the top, like double vision, but in audio.

"Yes," he says and stops himself from saying anything further because he's not sure which name he should be tagging onto the end of that answer, Merlin or Colin. He moves through the aisles slowly, because he really has got double vision now, stone corridors overlaying metal shelves, and it's making his head spin.

As he skirts a display of wallpaper or a suit of armour, a sales assistant or a serving girl says, "Excuse me, sir _sire_ , would you like some help?"

"No," he says. "No, thank you."

One of the girls looks accepting, the other surprised. He moves on to the next aisle and suddenly finds himself in the armoury, no light bulbs to be seen. He scans the racks and there's his sword, on the corner stand. He picks it up and tests the edge--very sharp. There's a single nick in the blade that the blacksmith must have missed, high up by the hilt. He weighs up commanding it be redone and just not bothering, but Merlin calls from the doorway,

"Hurry up! The guard has assembled and the King is on his way, you're going to be late,"

and he's standing in Homebase again, holding a light bulb in his hand, and Colin is saying, "Yes, that one. Honestly, how long does it take you to choose a light bulb?"

"Sorry," says Bradley, dropping it into the basket. "In my own little world."

That night, he thinks about seeing a specialist, but that's a little too close to admitting the truth. He decides to wait and see if he dreams, and he does dream, but it's a surreal affair involving driving a Reliant Robin down a rollercoaster while singing excerpts from Les Miserables, which doesn't involve swords or castles or people calling him 'sire', so he classes Homebase as some kind of blip in the radar and doesn't go see anybody.

-

The premiere of _The Sky Weeps_ marks the end of Bradley's holiday and he wishes it didn't feel so exactly like that. His apartment is strewn with the mess he made whilst packing, most of the things in the fridge have gone off and he inexplicably has sand in half of his shoes. Los Angeles is even greyer and smog-stained than he remembers and the road-users are just as rude. He thinks of his flat in Kensington, of the leafy streets and the quirky shops, and can't stand being away from it.

In the car, Colin tells him to stop sulking.

"I'm not sulking," says Bradley.

"And stop fidgeting, or you'll lose your cufflinks and look like some kind of tramp."

"Yes, Mother," says Bradley, forcing himself to be still.

"So which one's this?" asks Colin, fiddling with his own cufflinks, the hypocritical toad.

"The New Zealand one."

"And you die at the end?"

"Yes."

"You died at the end of your last film, too. Is this becoming a trend?"

"Think it has to be three to be a trend."

"What about your next film? You die in that, too?"

"Haven't decided yet."

"Whether you die?"

"Which film, plonker. Got a couple of scripts I'm eyeing up."

"You die in any of them?"

"Some."

"Must be a trend, then."

The car rumbles to a stop and Bradley opens the door on the squall of journalists and flashing cameras. Colin clambers out beside him and they stand still for a moment, to let the photographers do their thing. Bradley feels weird, really wants to put his arm around Colin, but can't. He'd usually put his hands in his pockets instead, but he can't do that here either, so his arms just hang limply by his sides, not sure of their purpose.

He knows all the journalists and magazines have noticed that, whenever he's presented with a plus-one situation, he always either brings Colin or goes alone, but so far they've only wondered why he doesn't have a Swedish model on his arm instead. They haven't yet started speculating and forming theories about him and anybody, let alone Colin, but that probably won't last much longer.

It's not as if they haven't talked about it, either. It's just that Colin is a deeply private person and as soon as they announce their relationship to the media, all that privacy will be lost. Bradley doesn't want that for Colin.

He puts it to the back of his mind, like he always does, and starts working down the journalists and television crews lined up along the barriers.

"Bradley, Bradley!" calls one woman. "We've heard that this is a very different film from your last one. How do you feel, having taken that new direction?"

"I think it was definitely a decision I really thought about," he says. "You don't get many opportunities like this, to do a film about such a sensitive and controversial issue. This film gave me the chance to tell a really important lesson about some of our world's history, so I just jumped for it."

"You liked that controversial aspect?"

"Well," he glances back at Colin, who's chatting blithely away to the Head of Principle Photography, and says, "Sometimes you have to push the boat out a bit, surprise people. If people didn't do the unexpected, life would be so dull. I think what a lot of people will see as negative parts of this film are actually the best, because they speak to viewers the most. Make them think."

As they take their seats in the cinema, Colin says, "You excited?"

"A little," Bradley replies and he's lying. He's so excited. Nervous, too, but in a good way.

It's good. Really good. The cinematography is gorgeous, the script flows neatly from scene to scene and his own acting doesn't make him want to grimace.

Only, about two thirds of the way in, this scene comes up--a Maori man, knelt in the mud at the feet of a white man, Bradley's character--and he's not just seeing it on the screen, not just remembering filming the scene, he's _there_ , holding a sword over a helpless man.

"Why do you do this?" asks the man.

"If only you would listen," Bradley replies, but then the world shifts again and he's standing in a different muddy field, holding a different sword, a different man knelt at his feet.

"Prince Arthur," begs the man. "Please, do not do this. Think of my children--"

"Think of all the people you have killed," Bradley snarls. "All those you murdered with your sorcery. They were somebody's children, once."

"Please, sire, have mercy--!"

"I'm afraid I cannot do that," he says and swings the sword in a great and condemning arc.

It takes three blows to sever the sorcerer's neck. When the head finally detaches and starts rolling slowly away down the hill, Bradley is covered in blood, up to his elbows, splashed across his face. He thrusts his sword at a page.

"Clean this," he says. "Find the head. Burn the body."

He stumbles towards his tent, filled with empty triumph and a deep sickening in his belly. His vision swims as he looks at his hands, streaked and spotted with tainted, magical blood.

"Bradley! Bradley, look at me. Look at me!"

He watches his hands flicker between stained and clean, faster than blinking, and when he looks up, it's into Colin's worried face.

"Bradley?"

"Yeah," says Bradley, glancing at his hands again. They're clean of blood, even when he checks under his fingernails. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"You are not fine," says Colin, gripping his shoulders. "What happened?"

"I don't know, I--" he realises he's sitting on the floor inside the disabled toilet, beside the baby change table. There's an emergency handle on the wall, gratingly red, and he glances at his hands again, just to be sure. Colin gives him a little shake.

"Seriously, Bradley, what's going on?"

"I--What happened?"

"You ran out of the film and when I found you, in here, you were on the floor." Colin looks pale and shaken. Bradley can only imagine what he himself must look like.

"Can we go home? Please, Col, I'm fine, just--I just want to go home."

"Okay," says Colin and fishes Bradley's phone out of his inside pocket to call their driver.

-

After the lengthy, tense drive home, Bradley has a headache blooming in his left temple and a sincere desire to do nothing but sleep until he is dead. Colin circumvents this by giving him some aspirin and staring at him very intently.

"What?" Bradley asks, annoyed.

"What happened in that cinema?" says Colin seriously.

"I don't know, all right?"

"Don't give me that crap, Bradley. You are a great actor, but you can't lie to me. I know you too well. Now tell me what happened."

"I'm telling you, I don't--"

"Bradley, _please._ "

Colin looks at him, brow creased with distress, and Bradley stares straight back. Colin looks away first.

"You really worried me," he says, quietly, then amends, "You're _still_ worrying me. Just tell me what happened. Please."

Bradley takes a deep, shaking breath, then lets it out again, slowly. "I've not been sleeping well," he says.

"Yeah, I've noticed," says Colin.

"Really?"

"When you're asleep, you kick. And snore. You've not been doing that lately."

"I've been having these nightmares," says Bradley and it's difficult, really difficult, admitting it after all this time. "And one of these nightmares is really similar to a scene in that film. I don't know why it was okay while filming, but now it's not and I just--" He pauses to collect his thoughts, to decide what he's going to tell Colin.

He chickens out and goes with, "I just had to get out of there."

Colin looks simultaneously exasperated and relieved at that and says, "You didn't think about seeing a doctor?"

"It doesn't happen all the time. Just every so often," Bradley says and sighs. "I thought it was getting better."

"Well, promise me you'll make a doctor's appointment?" says Colin, and doesn't wait for an answer before pulling him into a tight hug. Bradley really wants this dream thing to go away because he doesn't like worrying Colin. He knows that's all Colin will do when he goes back to London, whatever job he picks up, half of him will be distracted and anxious. That's just how he is.

After Colin flies back to the UK, Bradley does as he asks and makes an appointment with a doctor. He expects the ten-minute conversation to end in a mediocre reassurance and a prescription of less stress and more sleep, but the American private healthcare system is apparently much more generous than the NHS, because he leaves the health centre with several leaflets about tai chi or yoga or something and a bottle of sleeping pills.

The pills work, but don't help. He sleeps right through the night, but the drugs just trap him in his dreams, unable to wake up from his nightmares. Colin sounds so fretful on the phone that Bradley lies and tells him he's never felt better. Uneasy about having a mostly full bottle of sleeping pills in his bathroom cabinet and reminded vividly of the tragedy of Heath Ledger, he gets up in the middle of the night and flushes them all. He sleeps even worse, after that.

-

After the premiere, there are innumerable interviews and magazine articles about the film that he's contracted to attend to and they're so soul-destroying that he considers instructing Julia to remove them from all future contracts. Possibly with a flamethrower.

The interviews consist of him talking about the general premise of the film, how it was working with some of the other stars, what he thinks he might do next. None of them mention his little episode, until one talk show, hosted by a particularly belligerent woman with nails like scarlet talons.

"Now, I heard something from a friend of mine, who was present at the premiere of the movie," she says, leaning forward in her seat, and Bradley feels an ice-cold chill in his spine. "Tell me if I'm wrong, but I heard you experienced some kind of mental breakdown and ran out of the theatre. Is that true? Scared of your own performance?"

Bradley is good as bullshitting, so he just laughs.

"Scared of my acting, more like," he says. "It's always awkward, as an actor, watching your own work. I had such high hopes of this film, I just couldn't bear to watch it, I was so worried what people might think of it."

"But your performance received critical acclaim from reviewers all over the world," she says. "I've been to see it and I thought you were great."

"Ask any actor," says Bradley. "I assure you, the majority of them will say that they never watch their own films, except for the premiere. It's too excruciating."

"How interesting," she says, and moves on to ask him about his future plans. Bradley's mouth is dry, but he doesn't take a sip of water because he doesn't want the camera to see his hand shake.

-

He throws himself back into work, to the combined alarm of Julia, Scarlett and his mother.

"Are you sure?" they all say.

He deflects Julia and Scarlett with arguments about his career and the need to continue working. His mother is not so easily averted.

"I've spoken to Colin," she says, and Bradley thinks that's possibly the most damning phrase he has ever heard.

"Oh, yes?" he says, sweetly.

"He seemed quite worried."

"That's just Colin. Always worrying."

"Is this film really that upsetting? I was talking with Mrs Williams across the fence the other day and she didn't find it at all distressing."

"She probably fell asleep ten minutes in, Mum."

"No, no, she expressly stated that she highly enjoyed it. Recommended I go see it, in fact."

"Then you should go see it," says Bradley. "If you like. Honestly, Mum, I'm fine. The film's fine. Don't pay attention to Colin. He's just worked up about this project he's doing right now."

"But I don't like to see him fret," she replies. "Especially about my son. He sees you more than I do. Sometimes I have to take his word."

"Don't worry about it," he says, for the third or fourth time in this conversation. "I'm starting work on this new film in a week or so and I'll come back and see you as soon as I'm done, okay?"

"All right," she says, sounding only partly convinced. Bradley distracts her by asking after his cousins. She retaliates by telling him not to get any skinnier and things begin to seem normal again.

-

The new film, _Black Cat, White Monkey_ , is a surreal, ultra-modern affair with a seemingly limitless budget and Johnny Depp in a supporting role. Bradley feels a little twinge of something that could be embarrassment or pride every time he looks at the call sheet.

"So," says Jennifer, his co-star love interest. "How is it, Bradley James, that you are still so unattached?"

"I don't know what you mean," Bradley replies, scrawling another note into the margin of his script. "I am attached to many things. My legs, for instance. My hands. My dignity."

"Very funny. You know exactly what I mean."

"I haven't the faintest."

"This really isn't in your best interests, you know," she tells him, looking half annoyed, half amused. "The more you avoid the question, the more interesting I think the answer's going to be."

"In that case, I remain so unattached because I am a eunuch and I snore like an asthmatic chainsaw. Also, I have leprosy."

"That's not true at all. I gained indisputable proof that you are not a eunuch four days ago, when we filmed the bedroom scene."

Bradley forces himself not to smile. "It was a very realistic prop."

"BJ, you are a sick, sick man," she says, just as one of the assistant directors hurries up in a tizzy and says they have to be on their marks five minutes ago.

"Always busy busy, rush rush," Bradley grumbles as they wind their way through the forest of lighting rigs and cables.

He and Jennifer get into position and the make-up girl is just powdering his nose one last time when he looks down at the gun in his hands and suddenly has no idea what to do with it.

Jennifer turns to look at him, glances at his fingers, at his white knuckles.

"What?" she says.

But Bradley isn't entirely sure _what_. He knows that he's holding a rifle, which he should hold in this way, point in this direction, but his hands don't. As if this is the first time they've held this strange, foreign object.

His hands start shaking and Bradley gets scared, thinking that maybe he's trapped in some kind of paradox. Just as the director calls for silence, he drops the gun.

"Whoops," says the sound rigger. "Butterfingers Bradley."

"Yeah," Bradley laughs stiltedly and bends to pick it up, but now he really doesn't know what to do with it. He picks it up by the barrel--what he _knows_ is the barrel, even if he doesn't know what it's for--and it feels weird, unbelonging in his hands.

"Bradley?" says the director and Bradley's torn between the two feelings. Torn between one dimension, where he's confused and displaced and wanting to go home, and the other, where he's aware of everyone's eyes on him, feeling embarrassment and growing horror beginning to crawl up his spine.

"I--" Bradley starts, staring at Jennifer, who's looking increasingly concerned. "I can't-- I need a break."

He flees the set and hides in his trailer, his head in his hands, and tries not to cry. After a minute or two, Mark, the producer and a much more likeable and reasonable man than the director, knocks on his door and doesn't wait for an answer before coming in.

"You all right?" he says, sitting on the coffee table. Bradley takes a shallow, shaky breath.

"Not really," he says.

"You should talk about it," Mark says, calmly.

"I want to," Bradley says, thinking of how worried Colin had been. "I want to, but it's just--hard to explain."

"Well, either you talk to me, now," says Mark, "or I'm going to have to suspend this movie until you see someone professionally."

"What?"

"You heard me. There's nothing else I can do, Bradley, not without compromising everybody else's work on this project."

"I--" Bradley knows this has to come out, soon, but that knowledge is tempered by shame. He's not crazy. Going to see a specialist--something he's put off for so long--would be admitting to it, facing up to the fact that something is wrong. Has been wrong for a while.

"Your choice, Bradley."

"I've--" Bradley says, and then plunges on. "I haven't been sleeping very well."

Mark makes an encouraging sound. "Go on."

"I've had these dreams. Sometimes-- Sometimes nightmares."

"What're they about? Do you know?"

"Lots of things. But they're all-- They're _horrible_ ," but Bradley doesn't mean they're horrible in the sense of being nightmarish--though some of them are. More than that, he means how it feels to wake up afterwards, cold and breathless, like it's the other way around and he's just woken _into_ the nightmare.

"Okay," says Mark. "That's okay. How about we talk about what just happened on set?"

"I don't want--"

"Bradley."

"I don't know, okay? I don't know what happened."

Mark sighs heavily. "I will suspend the movie, Bradley. I'm not kidding."

"I don't know! I don't know how to explain it."

"Okay," says Mark, seeming to pull patience from some well deep inside himself. "Tonight, I'll email you the details of this therapist. A specialist in helping with stress in actors."

"But--"

"No buts," Mark says, firmly, staring him down. "I want you to go, Bradley, do you understand?"

"Yes," says Bradley.

He gets the email that night, as Mark promised, and carefully writes down the contact details.

He does not go.

-

For the next few weeks, he dreams every night and begins to appreciate early morning call times, since it gives him an excuse to slump into the make-up chair, looking terrible and exhausted, and no one bats an eyelid. His nightmares don't creep into the waking hours again, not until the very last day of filming.

He's on the phone to Katie, between scenes, and she's ranting. Something about the government and criminals and maybe the death penalty.

"It's not fair!" she says.

"Life isn't fair, Katie."

"Don't give me that crap. Why people can't elect politicians who actually _think_ about what they say before they say it, I don't know. It makes me so angry."

"So do many things," says Bradley.

"Fools," she hisses and, for some reason, that chills his blood, shakes something loose in him. Across the field, an assistant director starts waving at him in some kind of demented semaphore.

"Listen, Katie," he says, "I've got to go."

"Yes, yes, go off and play," she says. "We'll talk soon, darling, bye bye."

He walks back to the director with a strange feeling in his belly, something between unease and indigestion. The director doesn't notice, just waves for everyone to get ready and says,

"Right, Bradley, last shot. I want you to run across the bridge, okay? But in character, yeah?"

"Yeah," Bradley says and goes to stand on his starting mark.

"Okay, everybody, cue sound...Action!"

Bradley starts to run, doggedly, because his character is tired. It's raining hard, maybe hard enough to be seen on camera, he's not sure, but it's making the bridge slippery under his feet. Halfway across, he nearly loses his footing and slips. When he steadies himself, he starts to run again and then stops dead.

Morgana is standing at the end of the bridge, but Bradley sees her face as clearly as if she were right in front of him. She is smiling wickedly and bone dry amidst the pouring rain.

"What?" Bradley says, shaking water out of his eyes. Behind him, somebody's shouting on a megaphone.

She laughs and stretches out a hand, says, in a whisper that flits and echoes around his head, _"Fools."_

Bradley feels fingers inside his chest, moving, gripping, and his heart--his heart is in agony. As he falls to the floor, his face pressed against wet concrete, the last things he sees are Morgana's eyes, golden and all seeing.

-

When he wakes up, it is to a dim, green room. He stares up at the ceiling, at the cracked paint, and wonders where he is and how he got here. One of the fluorescent bars in the light fitting is blackened from a broken filament and, when he tries to remember, he sees hands with fingernails like claws and a sharp, crushing pain in his heart. He shies away from the memory.

There are flowers, he realises. He can smell them, glimpse them out of the corner of his eye. He turns his head to look, slowly, because it feels like he's crawling through molasses. The flowers, in a vase on the bedside table, are sun colours: red and orange and yellow. In the dark, the colours are slightly muted, everything washed green. He realises that he's in a hospital bed.

There is a stirring near his knees. Someone says, "Oh, you're awake," and it's Colin, bleary-eyed and ruffled. One of his cheeks is red from where it has been resting on his arm and he looks dead tired. Exhausted, even.

"Would you like some water?" Colin asks. Bradley opens his mouth to say no, but that makes him notice how dry it is, how tight his throat is. He wonders how long he has been here, and nods.

Colin produces a glass of water and a straw. It's a little embarrassing; Bradley's not a child, or an invalid. Except, maybe he is.

"What happened?" he says, as soon as he is able.

Colin frowns and looks down at Bradley's knee, doesn't look up again. "You collapsed on set," he says. "The medics--they couldn't wake you up. Only, the doctors say it's not--it wasn't a coma. They said it was like you were sleeping."

Bradley doesn't feel like he was sleeping. He feels like he's just run for days through mountains and thickets, little rest, little food. Just running from some faceless, terrifying enemy. He doesn't say this to Colin.

"Oh," he says, instead. "I-- But I'm awake now?"

"Yeah," says Colin, and there's a very long pause before he says, "It was horrible, you know."

"What?" asks Bradley, except that's a stupid question--of course he knows what. Colin must have been worried sick, all this time, just waiting--

But then Colin says, with the voice of a man stretched as thin as he will go,

"I heard about it on the _news_ , Bradley. Do you know how awful that was?"

"I--"

"Just-- They didn't call me. Like--I don't know. I'm just sick of people not knowing how much I care about you."

Bradley can't think of anything to say, so he just sits there, knowing that this conversation is going to come to some kind of head, one way or the other.

"You're so far away," Colin continues, still staring at the blankets. "I wish-- I want to be in your life more, but I can't if-- not if you're half the world away."

There's a long pause and a heavy, sick feeling settles in the pit of Bradley's stomach.

"Are you breaking up with me?" he says, and he sounds absolutely pathetic.

Colin finally looks up at him. "No! No, that's not what I'm saying at all!" he says and Bradley feels the knot in his stomach unravel. Colin takes his hand. "I'm saying I want to be with you more of the time. I want to make sure that, if anything like this happens again, I'll be there for you without having to take an eight-hour flight first."

"Okay," says Bradley, stupidly, because there's not much else he can say.

"Okay," says Colin. "Wait, what? You mean, you'll do it? You'll come back home with me?"

"--Yes? But my job-- I can't just leave--"

"I talked to your agent. She says she thinks you need a break too."

"Which agent?"

"The female one."

That distinction is extremely unhelpful and Bradley's just about to launch into an evasively noisy one-sided discussion about Scarlett and Julia and how they are meddling hags and he never should have introduced them to each other, but then Colin says,

"I talked to your producer, too," and Bradley stops short.

"About what?" he says, nervously.

"About what happened. He says you've been bit funny for weeks. That you said you'd been having nightmares."

Bradley looks at his hands, but he can still feel Colin's eyes on him. "And?"

"And you said they were getting better," says Colin, critically.

"And they came back!"

"So, why didn't you tell me that?"

"I don't know. I didn't want to worry you, that's all."

"Bradley! I would rather know and be worried than be kept in the dark," Colin snaps. "Anyway, your producer says it's been affecting your work."

Bradley doesn't say anything.

"Is that true?" presses Colin.

"Maybe," says Bradley.

"Was it like what happened at the premiere?"

"No-- Maybe. I don't know. Not as bad as that."

"But it could be? As bad as that, I mean?"

"I don't know," Bradley says again. "Maybe."

Colin looks satisfied, but more concerned at his answer. "He also said he told you to go see a specialist."

Bradley keeps his eyes on his hands, clenched in his lap.

"Did you go?" Colin asks.

"No," says Bradley.

"You should," says Colin. "When we get home, I want you to."

"But I don't--"

"Bradley, _please_ ," Colin begs, startling Bradley back into eye contact again. "You collapsed and wouldn't wake up. Something's wrong--really wrong. I want you to go see a therapist about this, or you're just going to end up making yourself really, really ill."

Bradley hesitates and Colin squeezes his hand and says,

"For me, Bradley. Please, for me,"

and Bradley is helpless to do anything but give in.

-

Colin books his first therapy session just four days after they fly back to London and accompanies Bradley in the taxi to the clinic.

"I'm not going to run away," Bradley says, mulishly, although he had been having sneaking thoughts about finding a nice coffee shop to hide in instead.

"Just for my peace of mind," says Colin. "Would you like me to wait outside during your session?"

"No, thanks."

"All right, then. I'll meet you afterwards. Be good, okay?"

Colin watches him climb the steps to the clinic and waits until he's inside before leaving. Watching him go, Bradley has a disturbingly strong urge to flee down the road in the opposite direction, but then the girl at the desk behind him says,

"How may I help you, sir?"

and the game is up.

"Er, Bradley James to see Dr Patel?"

"Certainly, Mr James. Just take a seat there and you'll be called through when he's ready."

He sits down in the chair she indicates. It's the only one and it's so squishy he feels like it could fold him into its depths and he might never get out again. Despite the clinic's price tag and reputation, the magazines on offer are the usual affair: obscure sports or wife-rags. He's just flicking through the recipes in _Good Housekeeping_ when the receptionist looks up and says, as if prompted by some invisible puppet master, "You may go through now, Mr James."

Dr Patel is a slightly elderly man with very silver hair and a kind, open face.

"Please, sit, Mr James."

Bradley sits. There is no sofa to recline on, which is a slight disappointment.

"May I call you Bradley, Mr James? It helps our sessions if I can speak to you more informally."

"Sure," says Bradley, slightly off-kilter. "Yeah, that's fine."

"Very good," says Dr Patel. "Now, what are you here to discuss with me today?"

Bradley takes a deep, steeling breath. "I've been having nightmares."

"What are these nightmares about?"

"It's...hard to explain."

"How so? Is it because you do not remember them clearly, or is the content difficult to put into words?"

"The second one," says Bradley. "Only, some of them aren't nightmares. Some of them are just dreams, but they're all the same. But different."

"We'll start with one of the ones that are just dreams, then," says Dr Patel, noticing something down. "Can you try and describe one of these dreams to me?"

"It's--stupid, really, I don't even--"

"Bradley, we are here to solve this problem. I cannot do that unless you can communicate that problem to me."

"I just-- It's ridiculous, you know." He sighs, running a hand through his hair. "Especially since I-- Well."

"Try, Bradley. If it is causing you distress, it is not ridiculous."

Bradley looks down at his shoes and breathes deeply, slowly, and says, "In my dreams--in my nightmares, too--I dream that I am King Arthur."

He looks up at Dr Patel, expecting to see mirth or alarm, but there is only understanding.

"In these dreams, do you do anything specific, as King Arthur?"

"Loads of things. The dreams, they're always different. I'm doing different things, I'm all different ages. Some of them seem really important, others are just everyday things."

"I see. Anything else?"

Bradley hesitates before saying, "They feel like memories," something he's never admitted before, not even to himself.

Dr Patel just notes something else down and says, in that easy voice of his, "Please describe these dreams to me, in as much detail as you can."

Bradley talks almost constantly for the entire two-hour session and meets Colin outside the clinic, hoarse-voiced and drained.

"Good?" says Colin, perhaps overly cheerfully.

"Could have been worse."

Colin smiles and hands him a carrier bag. "You can have this, then. A reward for attending your first session."

Bradley looks in the bag. It's filled with vegetables. "Col, you shouldn't have, really."

Colin thumps him in the chest. "I'm cooking you dinner tonight! It's one of those stupid romantic gestures that we never do enough of."

"Oh," says Bradley, grinning dopily. "Cool."

-

He runs for his life across broken ground, slipping in the mud. He can hear the snarling, wheezing breaths of the monster behind him, ruffling the hairs on his neck. He can smell it, the gruesome, fetid stink of it, setting his teeth on edge, but he can't fall, he _can't._

"The river!" Merlin yells. "Make for the river!"

"What?" says Bradley, nearly losing his footing as he skirts a boulder.

"It can't swim! Get across the river!"

The river is just there-- _just there_ , feet away. Bradley puts on a spurt of speed, ready to dive in, but then he feels phantom hands gripping him, flinging him across the water. He lands uncomfortably on the opposite bank and turns in time to see Merlin hopping across, and is gratified to notice that he lands even more gracelessly.

The monster is pacing on the other side, growling and sniffing.

"What are we going to do?" Bradley says.

"I don't know," Merlin replies. "I've lost the silver knife. Either we've got to contain it, somehow, or--"

Merlin's words are cut off, as the creature takes a giant, flying leap towards them, all nine clawed hands outstretched.

In the morning, Colin looks weary and frightened and keeps sneaking glances at Bradley over his cup of tea. When Bradley asks him, Colin says,

"You screamed in your sleep, last night, and I couldn't wake you up. Scared the life out of me."

"Oh," says Bradley.

"Maybe mention that in your next session," says Colin. As he lifts his mug to drink, his hand shakes a little.

-

"Sometimes, they're not just dreams," Bradley tells Doctor Patel. "Sometimes I see things when I'm awake, too."

Doctor Patel makes a note. "Can you speak about this in any more detail?"

"It's like I relive the memory," says Bradley. "I see it, and I can feel it, like it's real."

There's a pause, while Doctor Patel scrawls something down on his notepad. Then Bradley admits,

"When that happens, I think I'm Arthur,"

which sets a chime going in his gut, a sense of rightness. He squashes the feeling down and Doctor Patel makes note after note after note.

That night, he gets on the internet and does some research, comes up with a lot of material on reincarnation. He starts reading through it, tentatively, before shutting the computer down in denial, dismissing it as impossible, stupid. This is because, very deep down, he is terrified that it might be true.

-

Weeks merge into months and the dreams get better. Bradley starts to have nightmares about normal things, like bad auditions and Doctor Who, and Colin stops looking so haggard in the mornings.

Bradley does a couple of odd jobs: talking at some schools, championing a charity, doing some interviews. One of them asks the million-dollar question,

"We heard that, earlier this year, you suffered a psychotic breakdown. Could you tell us about that?"

but he just shrugs them off.

"I don't think I'd call it a 'psychotic breakdown'," he says. "I was under a lot of stress at the time, that's all. Everyone gets a little overworked now and again. Sometimes, you just need to talk some things over, so I've been seeing a therapist and things have been much better since then."

The absolute best thing about his time off is seeing Colin every day, being able to greet Colin with a cup of tea every time he gets back from a rehearsal. Colin always slumps down on the sofa and takes the tea with a little smile, sips it and says it's good.

And Bradley always smiles back, because it is.

-

It's just an ordinary Sunday morning, Colin at one end of the kitchen table with the paper, Bradley hunched over the other with the sports section and the quick crossword. He's trying to come up with another word for 'legendary', eight letters, when it just hits him, and the words come out of his mouth before he's quite got his brain around them.

"I want to go public."

Colin looks up from the paper, one eyebrow raised. "Bradley, you are a household name. I don't think you can get much more public than that without appearing on a trashy reality show."

"No, no," says Bradley. "I want _us_ to go public. Our relationship."

Colin doesn't say anything at first, then, "Are you sure?"

"Well--"

"Because I'm not sure."

"Okay," Bradley says. "I get it, I do. But didn't you say you didn't like the way people discounted you? Because they didn't know how much you mean to me?"

"Maybe," says Colin, looking uncomfortable.

"I feel the same way," Bradley tells him. "Every time I think about the way people must see us, I-- I've been talking about this with Dr Patel."

"Bradley, those are supposed to be for helping you with your dreams, not angsting over your love life!"

"No, they're for dealing with any kind of stress I might be experiencing," says Bradley. "And keeping us hidden, like we're some kind of dirty secret, that's causing me stress."

Colin plays with his mug, spinning it on the table. "I don't know, Bradley. I want to, I think, but--"

"Oh, I'd never make you do it if you didn't want to!" says Bradley, waving his arms around. "Seriously, Colin, this isn't me pressuring. Just a thought, you know?"

"Yeah, I'll think about it," Colin says, smiling, and he does. Or, at least, he's abnormally quiet for the next week, until Bradley comes back from one of his therapy sessions a little earlier than planned. The flat is empty, but there's an enormous bunch of flowers on the kitchen table, possibly the most flamboyant flowers he's ever seen, and there's a card attached. It reads,

 _Let's come out!_

and Bradley can't stop smiling for the rest of the day.

-

Scarlett handles the press release and Bradley's life doesn't seem to change much. Popping down the shop for a pint of milk gets a bit awkward for a few days, because every gossip rag on the shelves has his and Colin's faces splashed across their front pages, but fewer women come up to him in bars and blatantly flirt with him.

A few days after the news breaks, Colin gets nominated for an award that Bradley doesn't even pretend to know about. Bradley goes as his date, which Colin gets a bit funny about, but then Bradley tells him,

"Look, darling, the whole point of announcing our relationship was so that you could flaunt me and my outrageous good looks, so do it!"

and Colin calms down.

When the car pulls up at the red carpet, Bradley loves it, loves getting out of the car and being able to put a hand on Colin's back, low down and intimate.

They split up. Colin goes to talk to the real journalists about his play and Bradley potters around with the tabloid writers and photographers, laughing and joking and not really telling them anything. He's just trying to detach himself from one woman, who keeps asking him overly searching questions, when something catches the corner of his eye.

There is a man standing at the end of the carpet, near the doors. When the man turns around, Bradley sees his face and it makes his blood run cold.

It is Mordred. Not a boy anymore, but a man. Tall and proud and murderous.

"Merlin," Bradley whispers, because he's terrified. He knows his destiny, knows how it ends, but it's not today, it can't be today.

Mordred is stalking towards him, one hand outstretched, his image flickering between himself and a monster, something with tentacles and claws and a million glittering eyes.

"Merlin!" Bradley cries, backing away, knocking over a woman in an unchaste dress. He can't see Merlin anywhere--

Then he hears Merlin's voice, bell-like in his head: _"Run, Arthur, run!"_

And Bradley runs. He pushes his way through the crowd and vaults over the metal fence, scattering men and their strange black, flashing devices. He sprints down the street, then has to stop dead, because he nearly collides with a cart; a cart without horse or oxen pulling it, with lamps that blind him and that travel faster than anything he has ever seen.

There are so many lights, lights everywhere, of every colour. They cast this realm into pools of shadow and light, such contrast between each. Bradley is afraid of the shadows and what might lurk there in a place so ingrained in sorcery as this.

He glances behind him. A crowd is following him and Mordred is at the head. Bradley starts to run again, turning a corner and skirting an enormous spire of glass and metal. He has never seen so much glass before. It stretches so tall it must scrape the sky. Dimly, he wonders if it would smash in high winds, if the entire thing would tumble down to the ground in shards.

There is a cave up ahead, with steps leading down into it. People are filtering into it hurriedly and Bradley follows. Inside this refuge, it is more of a warren, with tunnels leading in every direction. There's another curious metal fence, that lets people through with the use of strange orange tokens. Bradley slips through, behind a mother and child, and follows one of the tunnels, comes out at the top of some metal stairs. Stairs that _move_. Bradley clutches at the sides until he reaches the bottom and dashes through another tunnel, following the crowd.

There are doors open in front of him, people pouring through them. Bradley pushes forward and finds himself in a windowed box, half-filled with people.

Suddenly, the doors close and the box shoots into a dark tunnel. The lamps flicker on and off, the ground shakes and the walls roar. Bradley curls into a corner and shuts his eyes against the howling wind and the stale, fetid air. His ears pop.

Then the box fills with light and screeches to a halt in an open tunnel just like the last. The doors open and the other occupants of the box exit, some of them glancing at him with concern. A voice grates through some tiny holes in the ceiling and Bradley cowers, knowing it must be some kind of demon. He remembers what Merlin taught him and makes the sign against possession.

He is more afraid than he has ever been, trapped and lost in this ensorcelled kingdom. He's just about to take his chances and escape when the doors close again and the torture resumes, along with the terrible, yowling shriek of metal on metal.

There are men waiting for him when it next stops. They pull him out when the doors open and try to speak to him, but their words make no sense--devil language. He fights; tries to run again, for these must be Mordred's constructs come to bring him to their master. They try to pin him to the floor, but he throws them off and escapes up the stairs. He follows the crowds and vaults over the token-barriers, bounds up the steps two at a time.

Up, up and up he climbs, until he's outside again in the cool, sweet air. The multicoloured lamps blare down at him again, but their light is like a benediction after that dank cavern.

He rests by a fountain, puts his head in his hands and breathes, trying to shut out the glass towers and the pillared stone temples. He wishes Merlin were with him, hopes that he's not busy fighting Mordred in a losing battle.

More men come, with kind words spoken with the tongues of demons. They try to restrain him, gently, but when he lashes out, they use force, binding his hands with metal.

He doesn't remember much after that, just the prick of something sharp on his arm and blissful, enfolding darkness.

-

He wakes up in a hospital bed, the room empty and smelling faintly of bleach. He can't move his arms very far, and when he looks down, he realises he's restrained.

As if by magic, a nurse appears. As she checks his pupils and his blood pressure, he notices the security camera in the corner, which means her appearance is less to do with magic and more to do with him being watched.

"The doctor will come speak to you in a minute," she says, sitting down in a chair on the far side of the room. Bradley estimates it's more like four minutes by the time the doctor shows up in a white coat, her hair in an uncompromising bun.

She smiles at him and comes to stand at his bedside. "Welcome back, Mr James."

"Where's Colin?" he says, and his throat is sore, like he's been shouting.

"He's next door," she says, soothingly. "You'll see him soon. First, I may attempt to answer any questions you might have."

"What happened?"

"We believe you suffered a psychotic episode. A member of the public felt endangered by your behaviour, so you were sedated and taken into hospital custody."

"Why am I restrained?"

"We feared that, when you woke from your sedation, you would still be experiencing this episode," she says, calmly. "We were correct. As soon as you can be moved to a more secure unit, you will be freed."

"What? Moved? I--"

"Mr James, please understand that these precautions are only for your own safety and the safety of this hospital's employees. I will send in Mr Morgan for you."

"Hey, wait!" Bradley says, but she doesn't answer. She leaves the room, but the nurse stays. There's an awkward silence for a moment, during which Bradley considers asking the nurse how her day is going when Colin enters, looking awful.

He spots the nurse and says, "Can I please speak to him alone?"

The nurse hesitates, then glances at the restraints, nods, and leaves.

"Hey," says Colin, nervously.

"Hey," says Bradley, and Colin looks too pleased at that. "You okay?"

"Yeah, but, you know. It's you that matters. How are you feeling?"

"All right," says Bradley. "No worse than usual," and that's an extremely discomforting thing to say, judging by Colin's expression.

Bradley feels uneasy, like they're just going through the motions. There's something simmering under Colin, some outburst, but he can't tell what it is.

He plays the waiting game and Colin eventually says it.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?" Bradley asks.

"Just--everything. They've told me everything. I called your lawyer and they brought out all your therapists notes, and--"

Bradley stares at Colin, whose hands are gripping the bedrail just inches from Bradley's fingers, his knuckles white, his mouth in a thin line.

"What?" he says, quietly. "What, Colin?"

"--and why didn't you tell me that's what your dreams were about?!" Colin says, loudly and suddenly, like it's been pulled from him.

Bradley feels himself get angry. "As if you would have believed me."

"And you didn't even _try_ to explain?"

"It was ridiculous! I thought I was _King Arthur_ , for God's sake. You would have thought I was mad--"

 _"You are mad, Bradley."_

The silence afterwards is heavy and appalled.

"I shouldn't have said that," says Colin. His nose is a little red and he takes a few shallow breaths. "I should have let the doctors-- I'm sorry. I didn't-- It was just so horrible, seeing you--"

"It's all right," Bradley says, even though it's not, really.

Colin stares at his hands and says, haltingly. "You weren't _you_. And then they said I couldn't see you, in case I upset you, and-- and then you were insisting you were Arthur, and I--"

"What?"

"I just--kept thinking I should have realised earlier," says Colin, in a voice filled with shame. "That it all made sense."

"Why?" says Bradley. "Why did it-- Did I say something?"

"No," says Colin, and he sounds pained, now. "It was just, sometimes you would look at me like you were seeing someone else."

"Colin," Bradley says, earnest. "I'm not crazy, I swear. It's just--you look so much like him."

Colin looks up at him finally. "You just called me 'Merlin'."

"No, I didn't. I said, 'Colin'."

Colin makes a noise like a sob. "No, you didn't."

-

They throw him in the cell, his hands bound, so that he trips and lands face-first in the dirty straw covering the floor. They laugh as they bar the door.

"Fit for a prince," they snigger.

They leave him there for days. Each morning, they open the door and the light stings his eyes. They leave him a cup of water and a hunk of stale bread, which, until he manages to get his hands untied, prove almost impossible to eat or drink.

Every day, he wonders where Merlin is, why it's taking so long to mount a rescue. Normally, he'd expect the door to get unlocked after a day or two, Merlin grinning triumphantly, suspicious scorch marks on the floor outside the cell.

He waits patiently, because there's nothing else to do.

On the morning of the eleventh day, they pull him out of the cell and sit him at a table in a grand study. They tie him to the chair and don't close the curtains, so the summer sunlight streams through the windows onto his face, blinding him.

"Do you want me to close the blinds?"

"What?" says Bradley.

"The blinds," says the doctor. "Is the sun in your eyes?"

"Uh, yes," says Bradley, feeling shaken and off-balance. "Yes, please."

She gets up and twists the blinds closed, then sits back down across from him and shuffles her papers. "So, where were we?" she says, but Bradley interrupts.

"Who are you?" he says, and her face falls.

"My name is Doctor Nicola Grant, Bradley. We have been talking for the past half an hour. Or have we not?"

"I going to go out on a limb here," Bradley says, trying to dredge up some hilarity from the situation. "And say no, probably not. Shall we start from the beginning?"

"Certainly," she says, shuffling her papers again and managing not to look resigned. "You are aware, Bradley, that you are suffering from a severe mental disorder, yes?"

"I-- No, I don't think--"

"Please try to look at this from our point of view," she says. "I understand that, to you, this is all a mistake, you're just having dreams, but look at it from your boyfriend's perspective, for instance. To him, you periodically fade away into a delusion, into somebody he doesn't know. Can you imagine how awful that must feel to someone who loves you?"

"So, are you saying I have a split personality?"

"No. We believe you are suffering from a form of schizophrenia."

Bradley is confused. "I thought that was a split personality?"

"That is a common misconception. In fact, schizophrenia is a condition that causes abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality. Patients can suffer delusions, disorganisation of speech and thought processes and experience auditory hallucinations."

"Hearing voices?"

"Exactly."

"I don't hear voices."

"No, but from what we can gather, from your therapy sessions and from interviews, you do suffer visual and auditory hallucinations or delusions. Like a waking dream. In any case, all of these symptoms result in significant social dysfunction."

"I am not socially dysfunctional!"

"Bradley," she says, in a soothing voice. "Members of the public found you cowering in a Tube carriage. You did not appear to know where you were or, perhaps at the time, _who_ you were. We would class that as major social dysfunction."

"But that's not all the time," says Bradley, starting to panic. "I could get better."

"I'm sorry," she says, and Bradley feels the bottom drop out of his stomach. "I'm afraid that we have diagnosed you as suffering from a rare disorder called catastrophic schizophrenia."

Bradley tries to get a hold of himself, tries to ask, "Could you elaborate?" in as even a tone as possible.

"Catastrophic schizophrenia leads directly to a rapid decline into a chronic psychosis without remission, involving a severe deterioration of personality."

"So. I am mad."

"That is an unfriendly term," she says, and Bradley almost cannot stand the bland sympathy of her. "It more involves a disconnection from reality, an inability to distinguish the real world from your dreams."

She taps her pen on her notebook once and the room blurs, then sharpens again. When she resumes speaking, flicking through her notes, Arthur surveys the room.

The window is too small and, in any case, looks like it's sealed shut. He could break it, but there's nothing available to smash it with. The chair he's sitting on is bolted to the floor. So are the table and the woman's chair.

The woman is talking, still, in the calm, measured tones of a healer. Arthur wonders what she wishes to treat him for, then dismisses it. He feels fine.

"I'm sorry, but it's incurable," she says and she's good at lying. There's not a sign on her face to show she's speaking anything but the truth.

"I see," says Arthur, assessing the rest of the room. He takes note of the locked door and the lack of guards, files the information away. The healer talks at length about a course of treatment and Arthur makes all the right noises in the right places, waiting for his chance.

It comes when she stops speaking and offers him her hand. Arthur has never shaken the hand of a woman before and it almost throws him off-kilter; he almost misses the creak of the door handle.

Just one man comes in, no weapons, no armour. Arthur thinks that either they're foolhardy or extremely stupid. Perhaps both.

"Come on, Bradley," says the man and Arthur assumes that means him, that perhaps it's some kind of colloquial slang for prisoner. He gets up and walks casually to the door, ready to throw himself on the guard, then he notices, just down the corridor, an open door, sunlight streaming through. Glancing at the guard, he runs for the door, ignoring the shouts behind him of, "Wait, Bradley!"

Outside, there is a yard and a high fence. Some of the other prisoners are playing a game with a ball. Arthur feels his heart sink, then runs for a building on the other side of the yard. He gets one foot on a windowsill and stretches up, grabs for the guttering at the edge of the roof. There are spikes, but they're unevenly spaced and he can get his fingers between them. He pushes off the window and heaves himself upwards, if only he can make it onto the roof--

A hand grabs his leg and yanks him down. Arthur kicks, but more hands join the first. The guards drag him to the floor and pin him there. The healer comes to kneel by his head.

"What is your name?" she asks, softly.

"Arthur Pendragon," he snarls. "Crown Prince of Camelot."

She pauses, then stands up. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her shake her head sadly.

-

When Bradley wakes up, he's lying on a narrow, hard bed and Colin is sitting in the furthest corner of the room, by the door, talking like he has been for some time.

"Colin?" Bradley says, quietly.

Colin gasps, then looks up from his knees and says, "Oh God," and his voice cracks. "Please don't tell me I've been talking to--to _Arthur_ all this time."

Bradley doesn't say anything and Colin puts his head in his hands.

"This is Bradley, isn't it? You are Bradley?" he says.

"Yes," says Bradley. "It's me."

There's a long pause. Colin takes a few heaving breaths.

"I love you," he says, "but--"

Bradley can't stand to hear the rest of that sentence. He only knows that he has to hold Colin, has to have him in his arms as soon as possible. He gets up off the bed and starts for Colin, but Colin rears back in his seat and says, "Don't--"

Bradley stops dead. That word is like a knife in his heart.

"But--I love you," he says, and his throat thickens with oncoming tears. "Please, Colin, you--"

That seems to do it. Colin comes forward in a rush and flings his arms around Bradley, squeezing him tightly, shaking a little.

"This is just so hard," he says harshly, into the hair behind Bradley's ear.

"I know," says Bradley, stroking a hand soothingly up and down Colin's back. "I know it's hard."

Arthur buries his face in Merlin's neck and breathes deep, inhaling the comforting, familiar scent.

"We need to get out of here," he says.

"When you're better, yeah, we will," says Merlin.

"What? No, I'm fine, honestly, let's go."

"You're not fine! And the doctors decide when you are, not you."

"What is the point of you coming here if you do not free me?" says Arthur, angrily. "I've waited for so long, you have no idea--"

"Bradley!"

 _"Do not call me that filthy slave name!"_

Merlin looks at him in horror, transfixed for a moment, then he escapes through the door and it locks behind him, leaving Bradley pounding on it in desperation, calling Colin's name, hopelessly.

-

On Wednesdays, Bradley plays table tennis with his primary carer, Chris. He's never really played before, not when he was younger, so he's not very good. All the pieces seem too small, the table, the bat, the ball. They make him feel larger, more ham-handed and inelegant. Chris, in comparison, is the largest, broadest and most heavily muscled nurse in the entire hospital. He used to be a bouncer in a London club, but now he cares for psychiatric patients and, when wielding a table tennis bat, is graceful and poised. Far more so than Bradley thinks he'll ever be.

"Just practise," Chris always says. He also always leaves off saying, "You'll have plenty to time to get better," but Bradley still hears it, unspoken.

"I saw one of your films last night," says Chris, hitting the ball, quick and easy, making Bradley scramble after it.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Which one?"

"The one with Anne Hathaway in it," says Chris. "You know, everybody thought you were shagging her."

It could be crass and really rude, but Chris looks up as he says it and smiles in a way that just makes it funny instead.

"Would have," says Bradley, grinning back. "If things were different."

"Yeah? What kind of things?"

"Genes, maybe. They say it's in your DNA," says Bradley, and Chris laughs. "So how come you were watching such a powerful manly film like that?"

"It was my girlfriend's turn to pick. If I'd had my way, we would have been watching something involving Matt Damon."

"Ah, well, he's not all he's cracked up to be."

"Really?"

"Dunno. Only spoke to him once. He was quite drunk at the time. Kept trying to do this Michael Macintyre impression."

"Weird."

"You said it," says Bradley and he punctuates the remark with a smash that goes completely wide of the table and bounces off the bookcase, behind the television. He starts to go after it, but Chris waves a hand and crouches down instead.

Bradley waits behind him and watches as Chris gropes around for the ball.

Arthur sees the opportunity, feels the weight of the bat in his hand and strikes.

He brings the bat down on the base of the guard's skull with a sickening crack and the man crumples. Arthur searches him for any kind of concealed weapon, finds none, and snatches the guard's pendant and its token, the shiny, flat rectangle that he's seen them open doors with. He hurries, because there's not much time.

He runs for the door, jams the token into the slot by the door handle and wrenches it open when the light turns green. He turns left, running for the door marked 'emergency exit', almost stumbling, adrenaline pumping through his system.

As soon as he's out of the door, into the sweet, crisp winter air, a wailing alarm starts up. He races across the field towards the fence as he hears voices behind him, shouting. He doesn't climb the fence, but barrels into it, into one corner, where the wire is a little rusted and loose with age. It doesn't come free and he kicks at it frantically. Men are coming for him, running across the field towards him.

With one final desperate slam, the edge of the fence comes apart from the post. Arthur squirms through the gap, almost gets stuck, and forces himself up, forwards.

He is free, but not if they catch him.

He starts running again, but men are appearing from all directions, from within those strange, horseless carriages. He hears their shouts over the deafening wail of the alarm. They're getting closer and he is getting tired.

One of them gets too close, nearly close enough to grab. Arthur dodges and makes for firm ground, for the long, black road. They call his name, but there's only blood pounding in his ears, so close to freedom.

A hand grabs at his sleeve and he trips, stumbles through a bush onto the black road.

Suddenly, but also sluggish, like the world has slowed down, a scream starts up. A horrifying, howling scream that deafens him. He turns around and a bellowing roar starts up, urgent, and he is gripped by some otherworldly terror, spellbound.

He sees only a blur of red, taller than ten men, then darkness.

-

When his eyes blink open, it is to soft light, like the first dawn. Merlin is waiting, smiling like he would have waited hundreds of years for this day, and has.

Arthur smiles back and steps out of Avalon, into Merlin's waiting arms.

 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Please take the time to check out the wonderful art Gwyntastic made as part of our big bang collaboration [here](http://gwyntastic.livejournal.com/664797.html).
> 
> Written for the Merlin RPF Big Bang 2010.


End file.
